


❊ Every time he comes home ❊

by Mythstaken



Category: Buffy the Vampire Slayer (TV), Supernatural
Genre: BuffyNatural, Crossover, Fluff
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-02
Updated: 2020-04-02
Packaged: 2021-02-28 16:40:31
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,012
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23440342
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mythstaken/pseuds/Mythstaken
Summary: A look at the nature of Buffy and Dean's relationship, every time he comes home to her, a little different than before, but always the man she loves. (For @SaltBurned.)
Relationships: Buffy Summers & Dean Winchester, Buffy Summers/Dean Winchester
Kudos: 11





	❊ Every time he comes home ❊

◇─◇──◇────◇────◇────◇────◇────◇─────◇──◇─◇

Every time he comes home, he comes home a little different. Not brand new, still hers but a little different from the man that had kissed Buffy goodbye.

Every time he comes home, the way Buffy's heart accelerates is never any different, pulse swimming loudly, echoing, in her ear drums whenever she see the headlights of that car (Baby, his Baby) filter through the curtains and she lets out a breath that she never knew she was holding until that moment. He is here. He is safe and she thanks a god she was not sure is even listening.

Every time he comes home, there is this weight inside her chest that suddenly falls free the moment his hands find her waist. A world that sometimes seems malicious and full of darkness, filling with a warm light, even if for just that moment. Sometimes, the reunions are those that are long awaited, like a soldier coming home from war to his patient honey. He had his own wars and unfair battles that he never asked to be apart of, knight of hell and soldier of heaven. Sometimes, the only sounds are tossed aside rucksacks, breathless “I missed you’s” in between stolen kisses that try to make up for lost time, fumbling limbs that try to wait until they are disclosed to privacy, violent and devouring. Always wanting. That’s when she lets those hands, roughened and bruised from hard-gripped machetes, grip at skin unforgivingly. Why she let herself unwind underneath him, leaving not a slice of space between warm bodies, why she marks him with dragged nails on his back and bites on his shoulder, failing to mute sounds of devotion only to him. 

Because she understands. 

She understands the need to unleash. The pent up and the primal, all the death and decay (god, all that death) and somehow, she craves him closer still, to somehow take that burden and make it her own so he doesn’t have to carry it.

Other times, reunions are a different form of quiet with the way exhaustion seeps in those eyes that she calls home, soft, understanding smiles because she know this is his fourth day straight without a lick of sleep. Sometimes, she gets angry. Angry, that he subjects himself to such abuse. Angry, that the world has Dean Winchester and knows not of the times he has stopped this world from turning to ash. Angry, because, damn it, she is dotting. Those are the reunions that are hushed words, brushed foreheads and cupped faces. 

They're both alive. It’s an odd sense of relief. A worry that happens far too often.

Every time he comes home, her eyes search for new markings. Not the ones that bring her joy (like the way his eyes crinkle when he smiles because he means it, or the deep set laugh lines that make her warm because his laugh is the best sound she has ever heard or even the dusting of freckles that she adores to trace with her fingers), but the left-overs from a case, from cuts or bruises when he was trying to be someone else’s savior. Her eyes draw to his chin, a mark aged from years past, barely there and covered by stubble she asked him not to shave anymore (She loves the way it prickles beneath fingers and against skin.) 

To the naked eye, he is fine. 

She knows. She understands.

When the body is asleep, its natural defences are down, vulnerability taking stage. Buffy sees the marks when he sleeps. That’s when they’re more visible. She sees them not in what he says, but what he doesn’t. She sees them when he trembles in his sleep, making soft noises and she wishes that she can take it away, whatever threatens to take away his peace. She'd carry it forever it meant he didn’t have to. Instead, she lets fingers brush through his hair and try to lull him back to a place that is safer. She sees them when he unconsciously grips her closer to him and all she can do is wish to kiss the hell out of him, everything he has seen and will see. She sees them when he stirs and looks at her, and she sees someone who has seen so much hatred and death but when he looks at her? She swears, it’s like coming home. When he looks at her? It’s like he doesn’t know of the monsters that reign free. When he looks at her? She is not Chosen. She is not the Slayer. She is Buffy. She is simply his. The same hands that killed hours ago, that saved hours ago, now become her resting place. 

Buffy is in awe. In awe because everything he has been through, he is still standing. In awe, because sometimes, it was the humans that were the problem, not the monsters but he was the best human of all. In awe, because he was a beacon of light, a pillar of strength, something so good in a dark world, and she wasn’t even sure he knew it. Dean Winchester was one of the creations done right.

Every time he leaves.... it hurts just the same.

When he kisses her goodbye, whispers words that have become routine, but still, it never makes it any easier. 

Buffy swallow over sandpaper that prickles at her throat, but she knows that this is just as difficult for him. It was in the fine print of their jobs, the intricate threads pre-determined.

“I love you,” Buffy whispers, and she hopes that he knows that the words are said with her entire heart and soul poured out into them for him to take with him when the lines between realities become a little less clear. 

That she will love him no matter the choices he will have to make, the blood he will have to draw or the morals he will have to weigh. That when he walks back through that door, altered again, she’ll love him still. 

Every time he comes home.


End file.
